Weekend Open Forum: What is your favorite stealth video game/franchise?

For me video games have always been about the immersion of putting myself in the shoes of a single character on screen -- and maybe because I've never been naturally good at fast paced FPS games -- stealth experiences have always resonated with me. Developers have been trying to master the art of stealth since the very early days of the Metal Gear series and even in Wolfenstein dating back as far as 1981. Nowadays, the genre has evolved with some great franchises like Splinter Cell, Hitman and my personal favorite, Metal Gear.

Even though I have always had a soft spot for Snake's convoluted story-lines and admittedly stiff game mechanics, the other big players in the genre have always made me question who has done it the best? Not the story, not the characters, but the actual stealth gameplay mechanics. Even a game like Dishonored should be involved in the conversation in my opinion, it obviously doesn't have the pedigree of the aforementioned franchises, but it certainly added a level of speed and mobility to what was generally thought of as a slow paced and methodical genre. As for single game experiences, my favorites are Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Hitman: Blood Money and MGS:3.

For this week's open forum, we're wondering what your favorite stealth game/franchise is and what you think of the genre as a whole. Do the long-running franchises like Metal Gear and Hitman hold the crown or do new players like Human Revolution and Dishonored bring it to the next level?